Edgar Cochran ✝️’s review published on Letterboxd:
The complexity of emotions in a human being is endless; so is the brain. The new ambitious project by Pixar Animation Studios aims at combining both themes from the perspective of a child in a mature drama with a reduced running time so that a wider audience can enjoy it while balancing hitting emotional topics with mature drama and darker twists than before. Now THAT’s a run-on sentence. With so many oranges being balanced in the air, the result is undoubtedly better than what trailers might suggest regardless of one’s current opinion with Pixar after a couple of disappointing sequels and a questionable period piece that forced the inclusion of a Pizza Planet truck as a wooden figure.
The recent trend of 3D animation, after a notorious increasing competition, is the expansion of imagination for the creation of new worlds. Pixar was a pioneer at this, but releases like Monsters, Inc. (2001), Wreck-it Ralph (2012) and The Lego Movie (2014) keep challenging the conception of new worlds considered creative by modern audiences. There are many creative worlds, but few of them succeed at grasping the emotions and long-term remembrance of all audiences alike. Recycled plots, unlikeable characters and uninspired stories are some of the causes of why movies like Robots (2005) and Bee Movie (2007) are meant to fail. At the end of the day, at the core of Pixar’s heart, there is emotion, and a clear intention to the audience: there is often something they want to tell and reflect on.
Inside Out’s task was colossal, and it succeeds at a decent majority of its aspects quite well, while leaving some others downright disturbing. In the film’s logic, anthropomorphic beings control the emotions of human beings, which largely determine the person’s will. Moreover, these little beings do not fully embody their respective emotions at a 100%; they are an elaborate concoction of human emotions as well. So the people’s emotions react emotionally; therefore, the emotions have emotions. That’s a conflicting paradox. If the message with this was that all emotions form important complimentary constituents of our life and allow us to react complexly in such a complicated world, the message couldn’t be truer. But why translate this emotion to the emotions themselves rather than with the human characters, especially Riley? Easy. We have to go back to the basics of character construction in cinema as a variable that correlates positively with the people’s enjoyment of a film: if you make one-dimensional characters, their destiny is to be either despised or forgotten. So the emotions characters also react emotionally. Who is controlling their emotions? Now, that’s a true “inception” question.
The control that these emotions have over the character’s behavior with such immediacy is what disturbed me the most, because the repercussions of that “mind control room” almost nullifies Riley’s capacity to have free will. I say almost, because there are certain moments that I cherished that contradicts this theory, such as when the emotions are baffled at Riley’s behavior at certain points in the film, asking themselves: “Why is she acting this way?” Regardless of that, I support the notion that emotions in general are a marvelous creation by God which add infinite multidimensional layers to the soul of every person, thus giving them uniqueness, and making them react to different stimuli in various ways. Emotions were meant to potentialize our capacity to execute free will, instead of deterministically dictating our behaviors, as it happens in the film 98% of the times. Now, this theory of mine could also be contradicted if the film had focused on an adult, as kids’s actions might be more directly related to their emotions, but 12 years old is an age mature enough to measure certain consequences of our attitudes.
The allusions that the film makes to the complexity of thought and long-term memory is, indeed, very surprising, and I have four favorite highlights, the first one very famous, the next two rather obscure, and the last one very direct:
1) The abstract thought sequence was, simply put, fantastic.
2) The big shelves containing the long-term memory orbs mirror the shape of the exterior of a brain when seen from afar.
3) The house of cards inside Riley’s mind features the faces of Riley herself, her mother (Queen) and her father (King), which is an awesome nod at how she constructs and deconstructs mentally her relationship with her parents and the mental family stability this allows her to build. It is no coincidence that this house of cards crumbles more than once.
4) The destruction of the Princess Castle, which resembles Disney’s castle logo, is an allusion to our detachment from magical imagination and fascination when we walk towards adulthood, something that Pixar clearly wants to stop with its films.
Even if the emotions having mixed emotions themselves is a paradox that I cannot easily forgive – are they also manipulated by even tinier internal beings? – the clues left for making us understand that are smartly placed. Why would Joy have a blue glow? Why does Sadness feels joy and smiles at several occasions? Why does Joy cry? Why do all emotions feel fear? They are multidimensional. A clue of how the film would end was given to us since the very beginning: Joy has a blue aura.
And finally, the amount of Easter Eggs that the movie has towards past and FUTURE Pixar projects is FREAKING HUGE:
a) The Luxo ball is on Riley’s backpack
b) The Pizza Planet Truck is seen three times (I just counted once)
c) A-113 is a graffiti in the streets of San Francisco
d) It takes place in the Tri-County area of the Toy Story trilogy (1995-2010)
e) The Chinese food box of A Bug’s Life (1998) is, once again, here
f) Ted’s (Monsters, Inc. [2003]) giant legs can be seen in Dreams Productions
g) A game box with Finding Nemo (2003) that reads “Find Me!” can be seen inside Riley’s head
h) The cars in certain backgrounds follow the designs of Cars (2006) and its unnamable sequel
i) Remy and Colette from Ratatouille (2007) make an appearance, the former as a distorted and darkly funny nightmare, and the latter in the cover of a magazine.
j) The wedding of Carl and Ellie Fredricksen from Up (2009) is featured in the memory orbs.
k) Sunnyside from Toy Story 3 (2010) might be related to Riley’s childhood!
...and not forgetting about the short films:
l) The birds of For the Birds (2003) are seen in the beginning (I swear)
m) A poster featuring the little boy in La Luna (2007) can be seen in Riley’s classroom.
...and finally, the future project:
n) The sign against which the car crashes in Riley’s funny memory announces The Good Dinosaur (2015). Also, below the “Find Me!” box, a suggestive dinosaurs game can be seen.
With amazing imagination, contradictions, darker dramatic turns, an effective balance between adult and children’s humor, and a dramatic climax that brought me to tears (it is easier to make me cry than to make me laugh in a film and in life), Inside Out is exactly the film all of us needed, not to keep our hopes for the studio, but for recovering faith towards it.
75/100
P.S. The reference to Chinatown (1974) was stupid.
